The “romantic” song George Harrison wrote in tribute to Bob Dylan
Conflict is far more common within the musical realm than camaraderie, and even during the height of the ‘peace and love age’, The Beatles found themselves enmeshed in arguments and ever-rising internal tensions. In spite of all that tension, though, George Harrison always kept a place in his heart open for his fellow songwriting master, Bob Dylan.
Dylan was perhaps the only person in the world who could rival the revolutionary nature of The Beatles back in their 1960s heyday. Whether it was in the dingy Greenwich Village clubs of his early years or that earth-shattering stage at Newport in 1965, the songwriter certainly captured the zeitgeist of that era, so it is no surprise that he also fostered a close friendship with The Beatles, too.
You only need to look as far as ‘Norwegian Wood’ to hear the impact that Dylan had on The Beatles’ songwriting, but the open dialogue between those two musical behemoths extended far beyond their respective discographies. In fact, George Harrison’s Thanksgiving trip to Bob Dylan’s Woodstock home back in 1968 was perhaps the most important push in starting the Beatle’s plans for a solo career.
At the time, Dylan was suffering from the after-effects of a motorcycle accident, in the form of a broken neck, and even though the pair managed to strike upon a handful of songs together, it is fair to say that Dylan wasn’t exactly in the best spirits. Inevitably, then, the songs which were produced during that trip to Woodstock tended to reflect the rather odd mood of the Dylan household at that time.
That mood even extends, it would appear, to the rather romantic opening track of All Things Must Pass, ‘I’d Have You Anytime’, which is awash with a sense both of camaraderie and a sense of being lost. “It just seemed like a good thing to do; it was a nice track, I liked that,” the songwriter recalled to Billboard back in 2001. “And maybe subconsciously I needed a bit of support. I had Eric [Clapton] playing the solo, and Bob had helped write it.“
At the core of the song, it would appear, is the fact that both Harrison and Dylan were going through particularly turbulent times when the song was written, and both were in need of support. Dylan was waylaid with a neck brace, while Harrison was becoming increasingly and irreversibly fatigued with the ever-rising pressure of The Beatles, and so ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ was the release valve.
As Harrison’s wife, Olivia Harrison, theorised in Living In The Material World, years later, the song saw Harrison beg his fellow songwriter to open up to him. “George’s most important relationships were really conducted through their music and their lyrics,” she shared.
“I mean, the song that George and Bob wrote together. He was talking directly to Bob because he’d seen Bob, and then he’d seen Bob another time, and he didn’t seem as open. […] He was very unabashed and romantic about it, in a sense,” Harrison concluded, and it is difficult to disagree with that idea.
‘I’d Have You Anytime’ is an undeniably romantic track, and it sets the stage for the sheer pulchritude of All Things Must Pass. If anything, the fact that it was written for and with a rather reclusive Bob Dylan only adds to its momentous importance within the musical development of Harrison as a solo artist.
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